Tag Archives: new year

That was one heck of a year; Tsunami in Japan, a Rapture that wasn’t, bad government corrupted by 1% Banks too big to fail, Asteroid near misses and an apocalyptic comet that disintegrated into nothing but dust, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Davis, Tear Gas, Police Brutality, and to complete the dystopian slide – Obama signs the NDAA on Dec 31, 2011…

I started reading a few “conspiracy theory” kinda websites this last year. Just the thing to do when you’re in a blistering depression – read about a world as fuzzy, strange, disoriented, and bleak as the depression. I don’t know if this is really a good reading plan, but that’s how I spent some of my evenings during the late summer and the fall.

Seemed like a new “end of the world” was just around the corner, sometime in the middle of next week… and it never came. The end never came.

But this is the year for the big one, right? The 2012 Mayan Apocalypse A-Go-Go or something like that.

You might have noticed that my calender graphic at the top of this page only goes through December 21st – aren’t we going to have fun with that one this year?!?

Goodby 2011, Hello 1984

To remember this day in which President Obama signed into the NDAA into law I want to use the following quotes from my friend Sé Reed from Facebook today (used with permission) about the NDAA signing:

“Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation.”

– Obama’s ndaa 2011 signing statement

oh yay! but now I’D like to clarify that he specifically said HIS administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. i mean, the law says he can authorize that very thing, of course, but he will refrain from doing so. ISN’T THAT JUST PRECIOUS??

Sé Reed: ?Owen yeah that’s so happening. 🙁 it’s so beyond horrible. this one’s not gonna leave us unscathed. Iran is not a third world country, despite our best efforts to make it so.

Sé Reed: and not that signing it on new year’s eve was sneaky or anything. everyone’s totally paying attention to politics today, right? no one has anything else going on.

Owen: But my comment wasn’t about this strait of Hormuz bullshit, it was a reference to the provision in this same act to crash Iran’s central bank. Imagine if China’s plan was to crash the federal reserve. How would we react?

Sé Reed: Oh. Right. That. i can only get worked up about one issue per civil-liberty-dissolving, world-war-invoking, totalitarian-military-police-state-starting bill at a time.

Sé Reed: but yeah. the part about us destroying Iran is pretty fucking shitty. suddenly i feel like swearing a lot. happy fucking new year.

Jon Christopher: rant on!

Dana: ?Sé, good point…wonder how poetry slams will go over in FEMA camps?

Sé Reed: that’s an awesome thing to wonder, even though it’s awful it would need to be wondered.

Jon Christopher: Sé – I’m feeling the need to put a post together marking this disastrous occasion – can I quote you in my post?

Sé Reed: please do, by name and welcome.

What does this new law mean? I’m not sure, but we’ll be looking at it closer in the days ahead… We do know it’s a landmark moment in our nations history.

Last year my motto for the year was Share Your Truth, and this year my motto is Share Your Story…

Where does my motto come from?

I have been following the tracks of a vision, a creative pilgrimage of sorts, for several years which I am now chronicling on one of my project sites I launched in 2009 called The Turning – A Serial.

This journey continues through 2015, with various periods of time marked-out and notated in different ways… and each year has a motto.

Why a motto?

Because it simply condenses the massive amount of ideas I’m working with into a single phrase, which helps me stay on track throughout the year. When I forget why I’m doing everything I can always come back to my motto and find the tracks of the vision.

The overall piece that The Turning is a part of is something called The Book of Days and has taken over a significant part of my life since it began in 2008.

This vision began with one tiny little spark of an idea…

One Human, Being

A Very Short Story About My Name

In late October 2007 I had a funny little thought one day, “I’m just one human, being…” which, for me, embodied the idea of just one human in the act of being and also the idea of what is possible from just one human being. What difference can one human being really make?

And then I thought, “I wonder if the domain name ‘onehumanbeing.com’ is available?” – I checked, it was available, and I ordered it immediately.

the onehumanbeing logo

In that instant, a whole new journey was launched and Jon, onehumanbeing became part my identity and my new working name.

For over twenty years I had been doing all of my work under my name Jon Christopher, which is just part of my full name, but expressed my identity and my mission – “Gift of God, Christ Bearer.”

Ever since I was very young I thought of names as more than just random labels we put on people, but as a statement of identity, and I had changed what I wanted to be called every few years – lengthening or shortening my name – to fit my image of myself or to make a statement about who I was going to be next.

Around the time I turned 21 I choose to become Jon Christopher and started off on a new path that led to Tania and the life which I now live; and then, 22 years later, a new metamorphosis had begun.

After a few months of use one human, being smoothed out and morphed intoJon, onehumanbeing, which made it easy to give people my name and my web address – onehumanbeing.com – in one easy to remember phrase (at least it seems that way to me, but mostly people just get really confused when I tell them my name is Jon, onehumanbeing.)

It was around this time that my dreadlocks got started and our two dogs, Moseley and Suki, joined our lives.

It’s taken all of 2008 and 2009 for theses changes to do their work and strip away old material and habits, and for new ideas and possibilities to solidify.

But now a certain part of the process has finished and a new year and a new decade has begun and I continue on my journey.

Other Peoples Stories

Our friends, Russ and Laura, got on their bikes and hit the road this last year…

They recently stayed at Slab City near the Salton Sea and in the spirit of sharing stories I wanted to share an excerpt from their blog – you can go to their blog to read the whole story.

…While we are having our coffee, a steady stream of characters come and go. One pear-shaped old man comes and talks with us. He tells us how he use to volunteer at free clinics, how he has been on the road the last fifteen years and has lived year round at the Slab for five years, how he lost contact with his brother and family but reconnected with them recently through Facebook.

Every sun burned, dust covered face has their own story, their own unique tragedy or tale of escape that has brought them to the Slabs. We hear snippets and loose threads that make up the strange patchwork tapestry of the place but we have to keep moving…

Another photo from my cellphone – this morning there were no buds like this on the trees, but over the course of the day these developed, and some trees have even sprouted leaves – just today!

If I lived in another time, and followed a different calender, the spiritual leader or shaman would have probably pointed this out to the people so that planting could begin…

But then again, the people might have just celebrated the Solar New Year this last Sunday, February 22nd (that’s the date this year – it cycles around) – and he probably would have mentioned that we have entered the Year of the Manifestation of the Wind (the solar year began on 10 IK – IK means “wind” and is my day sign) on the Maya Tzolkin, or sacred calender which establishes the course of this next year – as things relate to the sun and solar events. Personally – I’d expect some very stormy events ahead – just watch the news over the next few months and see…

Of course, that would just be one of the pendulums of time he would be watching, and just a small part of a much bigger picture…

But we live in the modern rational world that gets very nervous around uncertainty, mystery and faith – so we wouldn’t listen to one of these wise men of old, even if he were to stand right in front of us…

I know I’m a week late but I’ve been busy (that’s an overused excuse…) with my projects, namely The MMJ Project and a new project site I’m building called The Medical Marijuana Lists, using my photos from my experience last year volunteering as CCLB’s menu person on WeedTracker.com.

If you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, just click the link above and check out my project site and you’ll see what’s going on… and if anything changes, I’ll let you know.

Have a blessed New Year!

Jon, onehumanbeing

PS. Oh, the image above… this year, 2009 entered on the Maya day of “10 OC”, which mean that this year is seated on the tone and quality of that day… that’s the quick answer.

I’ve been very busy with my other project “The Book of Days” – which is immense and overwhelming at times… but because of that project I follow the Tzolkin, the Maya sacred calender, as a theorical experiment.

When I have the project site ready for The Book of Days I’ll post it here…

about onehumanbeing.com

This website is designed, built and maintained by Jon, onehumanbeing.

onehumanbeing.com was established in 2008 as a way to initiate a new season of art for myself.

It is a super-project that launched a number of different sub-projects that have come and, mostly, gone (into my digital portfolio) such as redbotlovesyou.com, The Philip K. Dick Reading Club, The Turning, The MMJ Project, The MMJ Lists, The All-Seeing Eyebama, and UFOverdriver.

Most of this work has been done as Jungian experiments to explore the use of consciousness and the collective conscious as both subject matter and as an art material.